We have not decided what information will be available on Athelstan Online or what the appropriate format should be, but Athelstan has in the past made information available to language teachers and we will continue to do that. Suggestions are welcome. You can send email to Athelstan at athel@nol.net.
We also plan to post the bibliographic references that have been included in the Yearbook over the last past few years. We can also provide articles from the Athelstan Newsletter, and perhaps include the parts that we did not have room for. (The contents of the newsletter are not copyrighted, but we would appreciate hearing from you if you plan to republish or make multiple copies of any items from the newsletter.)
At present you can access Athelstan Online for the TALL Yearbook, the Athelstan Newsletter, our catalogue/price list, special offers, and for downloading demos of software that we sell. As mentioned above, we offer a 5% discount of the total invoice cost for online orders, which we define as via email or fax. The discount must be mentioned explicitly (or taken) to qualify. If you need an acknowled- gement of receipt of the order, let us know.
Edited by Mark Warschauer
[A new book published by the University of Hawai'i Press. $30. Also available from Athelstan.]
Table of Contents
I. ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION IN A SINGLE CLASS
Teacher-Student Dialogue
Electronic Dialogue Journals, Manuela Gonzlez-Bueno
Dialogue Journaling at Your Fingertips, Yu-mei Wang
Virtual Office Hours On IRC, Yukie Aida
Email Interaction
Ay Caramba!: Emailing with the Alias, Ricardo Chvez
Language Learning via Email in the Japanese Language Classroom, Laura Kimoto
Spanish Music through the Internet, Marta Gonzlez Lloret
The Collaborative Fairy Tale, Christine Manteghi
Espaol con Technologia: E-mail in Beginning Spanish Classes, Jeri H. Dies
Using an On-Campus Email List to Motivate Students to Communicate in English, Scott Schiefelbein, Hiromi Imamura & Shuji Ozeki
Bulletin Boards
The French Connection: Public Journals for High School Students, Nancy Kroonenberg
Computer Conferencing as a Tool for Augmenting Student Interaction and Collaboration, Dana Paramskas
A Computer Network For Prospective Teachers of French As a Second Language, Razika Sanaoui
The Class Newsgroup as Textbook, Sharon Scinicariello
The Electronic Journal An Experiment in Authentic
Communication, Jill M. Crotty & Judith E. Brisbois
Supporting Student Writing
Write from the Start!: Email for Beginning French Students, Dalila Ayoun
Academic Argument and E-mail Discussion Lists, Bonnie Olsen & Suzanne Lepeintre
Anonymous Peer Review of Student Essays on a LAN, Dorothy M. Chun
Teacher-Student Writing Conferences Via Emai, Naomi Gurevich
Intensive Writing Project Using an Internet Newsgroup, Seiko Oguri
E-Mail Discussion Groups in Foreign Language Education: Grammar Follow-up, Orlando R. Kelm
Topics, Topics and More Topics
Breaking the Ice: Email Dialogue Journal Introductions and Responses, Timothy Janda.
The Age of Reason: Examinging Beliefs as a Step toward Academic Writing, Timothy Janda
Will Bernice really bob her hair? Email dialogue journals about films and literature, Timothy Janda
Provocative Statistics: Analyzing Graphs and Charts over Email, Timothy Janda
Interpreting Humor and Comics via Email, Timothy Janda
On a Role: Exploring the Concept of Voice and Audience, Timothy Janda
Preparing by Email for an Oral Presentation, Timothy Janda
Whodunnit?: A Literary Jigsaw, Timothy Janda
Real-Time Rapping
Diad Debate, Nancy Kroonenberg
Real-Time Class Discussion on a LAN, Dorothy M. Chun
Teaming with Text (TWT): Computer Networks to Develop Deaf Students English Literacy, Joy Kreeft Peyton & Martha French
II. CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Getting Going
Preparing to Write E-Mail Personal Profiles, Mark Irvine
Describing One's Community Affectively for E-Mail Readers, Mark Irvine
What is 'Normal'?: Examining Cultural Stereotypes via Email, Ishbel Galloway
Easy, No-fail Keypaling for Novices, Marcella Rollmann
Cyber-Surveys
What I Really Wanted to Know was...., Cindy Kendall
Survey Across the World, Junko Ady
Teaching Culture with USENET Discussion Groups, Amy Sheng-Chieh Leh
Keypal Connections
Cultural Encounters: German and American Students Meet on the Internet, Jennifer Ham
Individual Electronic Mail with Native Speakers, Cindy Kendall
Organising Primary School Pupils for E-Mail as a TESL Aid, Roger Livesey & Emanuela Tudoreanu
Pen Pals for Purpose, Practice and Product, Hedy McGarrell
Two Semester' of Email Keypaling: What Works and What Doesn't, John Wong & Pam Cowan
Learning in Tandem
Perfect Match! - Second Language Exchange Program, Giselle Kett
International E-Mail Tandem Network, Helmut Brammerts
Class-to-Class Connections
L'Histoire, Mon Histoire: Comparing Family Histories via Email, Rick Kern
U.S. Language through Literature: A Transatlantic Research Project, Carla Meskill & Krassamira Rangelova
'What's yours Like? Ours ... '. A Motivating E-Mail Project for TESL, Roger Livesey & Emanuela Tudoreanu
A Virtually Motivating Experience: An E-Mail Exchange Between Students Across the Pacific, Mary MacDonald, Tadashi Shiozawa & Shuji Ozeki
Sharing Stories
Recipes and their Stories, Susan Gaer
Folktales Around The World, Susan Gaer
Global Stories: Using E-Mail Texts in Foreign Language Classes, John Meadows
Intercultural Keypal Oral History Project, Ed. Shorer
Exchanging Superstitions for Writing Fluency Context, Hedy McGarrell
Global Cafes
Swahili-L: An Internet Model for Less Commonly Taught Languages, Patricia S. Kuntz
The GAKUSEI lists. E-mail Discussion Lists for Students of Japanese, Laura Kimoto
RIBO-L: A German-English Bilingual Electronic Discussion Forum, Norbert Hedderich
CAUSERIE: A Cafe Campus in French, Dana Paramskas,
International Student Email Discussion Lists, Mark Warschauer
International Student Lists: Introducing the General EFL Class to the Net, Aliah Schleifer
Polynesian Languages on the Information Highway, Richard Benton
Looking at Language
Creating and Using a Slang Dictionary via Email, Christopher Junghans
ENGL-SL: Access to In-Depth Help with English, Marilyn Martin & Rachel Koch
E-mail for Distance Japanese Language Learning and Teacher Training, Toshiko Ishida
Getting Mistakes into Perspective, Mark Irvine
Global Babel. A Modern Version of 'Don't Tell the Postman,' Anita Rayburn-Klein
Language Learning Via Email: Demonstrable Success with German, Elke St.John
Multi-Class Projects
Mirndonos - Looking at Us E-mail/Snail-mail Project, Marilyn Hannan
International Robot Activity for Advanced Technical English, Linda Thalman & Ruth Vilmi
International Environment Activity, Ruth Vilmi
The Individual Writing Exchange, Ruth Vilmi & William T. Burns
The Cities Project, Christine Meloni
Import/Export E-mail Business Simulation, Michael Feldman
Writing Styles Project, Ron Corio
A Project-Based Approach to Children's E-Mail Exchange, Roger Livesey & Emanuela Tudoreanu
Project IDEALS: Social Interaction and Negotiation via Cross-Cultural Simulation, Linda Mak & David Crookall
MOOving Forward
MOO-La-La---Conversing in Virtual Paris, Barbara Sanchez
schMOOze University: A MOO for ESL/EFL Students, Julie Falsetti & Eric Schweitzer
MundoHispano: a Text-Based Virtual Environment for Learners and Native Speakers of Spanish, Lonnie Turbee
What can we do in a MOO?: Suggestions for Language Teachers, Lonnie Turbee
Virtual Classrooms: University of Victoria's 'VCR MUSH,' Peter Glz
A Virtual Treasure Hunt : Exploring the 3 Dimensional Aspect of MOOs, Truna aka J. Turner
Electronic Courses
Virtual Immersion in Italian, Yvette Pollastrini
'Germany live': Contemporary German Issues on the Internet and World Wide Web, Bernhard R. Martin
Electronic English Course, Stanislava Kasikova
FUN101: An Online EFL/ESL Writing Course, Karla Frizler
The Computer Club - Social and Computer Networks Converge, Ken Fackler
No Student Access? Internet Learning Activities via the Teacher's Home Computer, Jim Rorke
III. USING ONLINE RESOURCES
Online News
'Le SMIC Jeune': Gathering Information and Language from Foreign Language Newsgroups, Sharon Scinicariello
Nachrichten: Electronic News Bulletins and the German Language, Carol Anne Costabile-Heming
World News Abroad, Lauren Rosen
Russian Articles Sent by E-Mail, Richard B. Paine
Chronicle on the Web: Online News as a Resource for Teaching ESL, Jeri H. Dies
Data-Bases and Bibliographic Research
Bringing Culture Alive: Using Lexis-Nexis to Integrate Cultural Issues Into an Introductory Reading Course, Rachel Halverson & B. Jane Scales
Electronic Databases On The Internet: New Opportunities for the Language Classroom, Elke St.John
Internet Movie Databas, Troy Cox
Bibliographic Research on the Internet via Gopher, David Knutson
An Electronic Library for a Department of International Relations and History in Mexico, Paul Rich
Travelling the World Wide Web
German Geography on the Net, Andreas Lixl-Purcell
German Area Studies on the Net, Andreas Lixl-Purcell
Popular Culture Studies on the Net, Andreas Lixl-Purcell
Reading Authentic Materials Found in the Internet, Yukie Aida
A Virtual Travel Activity in Japanese Using the World Wide Web, Kaori Deguchi
MayaQuest: Exploring the Yucatan via the Internet, Marilyn Hannan
City Net: Travel the World from your Desktop, Lauren Rosen
Metro Your Way Around!, Lauren Rosen
Know Before You Go, Sigrid Weinmann
Enhancing A Weather Lesson: Using the World Wide Web in K-12 Language Classes, Eva Bogard
Making Foreign Language Study Real via THE WWW GLOBAL VILLAGE, Janice B. Paulsen
Net Navigation
Yahoo! Information-Gathering Activity and Composition, Heidi Shetzer
A Student Generated List of URL, Heidi Shetzer
What's Out There?: Summarizing Information from the Web, Linda Mak & Stephen Mak
Telnet Treasure Hunts: Learning to Read (on) the Internet, Suzanne Lepeintre and Laurie Stephan
Multimedia
Communicative Computing: Language Learning Activities at the University of Iowa Libraries' Information Arcade, Eduardo Garcia
'Limpopo' and 'Lenin': Multimedia programs from the Internet for Students of Russian, Snejana Tempest, David Danaher & Christopher Ott
Teacher-Designed Web Pages
The World Wide Web Puts a New Spin on Homework: The Home Page Work, Ricardo Chvez
Max and Moritz Invade the Web: Providing German Learning Materials
Over the Internet, Bob Godwin-Jones
English as a Second Language Home Page, Rongchang Li
Designing Exercises and Tests on the Web, Stephen Mak & Linda Mak
Student Publishing on the Web
Dcouvrir Berkeley: Students' Representation of their World on the World Wide Web, Rick Kern
La Clase del Senor Diaz-La Coneccion Mundial (Senor Diaz Worldwide Spanish Classroom), Dan Dickey
World Wide Web Culture Pages, Ruth Vilmi
Web Publishing for Students of EST, Roy Bowers
EX*CHANGE: Electronic, Xross Cultural, Hypertextual Academy of Non-native Gatherings in English, Heidi Shetzer
Web Newsletter '95: A Collaborative Learning Project for Technical Writing Instruction, George Jor
Appendix A: FLTEACH: Online Professional Dialogue, Jean W. LeLoup & Robert Ponterio
Appendix B: Basic Internet Tools for Foreign Language Educators, Jean W. LeLoup & Robert Ponterio
Bibliography
markw@hawaii.edu
http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/~markw/
A description of the use of the program for language teaching will be available in the next issue. Here we will simply give a brief overview of the main features of the program for those who are familiar with concordance software.
The diagram to the right shows the main screen following a search for nevertheless. The main window displays some of the instances of never- theless and the small upper window shows the context for the selected concordance line. These windows can , of course, be expanded, and the relative size of the concordance window and context window can be adjusted.
MfW can load a corpus comprised of multiple files, totalling several million words. Both word or phrase searches of the corpus are possible and wildcard characters can be used for additional flexibility.
The search results can be manipulated in various ways: Unwanted concordance lines can be deleted. The search results can be sorted 1L (First Left), 1R, 2L, 2R, as well as by search word and by text order, then saved to a file and/or printed. MonoConc for Windows also provides a frequency count for the words in the corpus and for the collocates of the search word (2L, 1L, 1R, and 2R).
MncWs-I $ 89.00
MncWs-S $425.00
The journal is refereed. The current editorial board are: Dr Mike Levy (General Editor), Dr Jack Burston, Chris Corbel, Dr James Garton, Debra Hoven, Professor Andrew Lian, Dr Brian McCarthy & Professor Roland Sussex.
on-call is published three times per year in January, May and September. These three issues comprise one volume. From 1995 the subscription period will follow the calendar year rather than the Australian financial year. Subscriptions are for the complete volume of the journal.
Subscription fees are as follows: (Australia: Individual A$20.00. Institution A$30.00. Overseas: Individual: A$40.00; Institution A$50.00).
Cheques should be made payable in Australian dollars and sent to
on-call (c/o Mike Levy)
The Centre for Language Teaching and Research
The University of Queensland
Brisbane, Qlds. 4072 Australia.
Life in Text and CD-ROM form
Available from Prentice Hall, Trato hecho! is a modular beginning and intermediate Spanish series. The program stresses the features of Spanish needed for everyday communication and applies them to realistic settings around the world. It aims to provide contexts that reinforce the usefulness of Spanish in today's economy, particularly North America, and develop students' understanding of Hispanic cultures and their growing importance around the world.
Trato hecho! is based on a flexible modular design. Each volume of Trato hecho! consists of six chapters, where the main theme of every chapter is divided into four related topics, each corresponding to a language function that comprises three to four two-page modules A cumulative active vocabulary list is included after the final topic of each theme, before the student proceeds to skill-using process reading, writing, and application modules. Review chapters recombine vocabulary, structures, functions, and cultural information in applied settings to offer cumulative, real-world practice. This modular design makes the material manageable by allowing learners to test their ability and apply new material in one module before continuing to the next one. In addition, instructors are given the flexbility to plan and personalize a course, tailoring it to the needs of their students by customizing the material, selecting modules to emphasize.
Both levels of Trato hecho! are available in paperbound text and electronic or cd-rom formats, for both the ibm and Macintosh platforms. The cd-rom will enable students to slow the rate of speech, repeat phrases with the help of a native speaker voice tutor, look up words and phrases, record and listen to their own voices, and view translations of recorded material.
For more information,
contact:
Foreign Languages
Prentice Hall College Division
One Lake Street
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
E-mail: aileen_ugural@prenhall.com
ScottForesman announces Encuentros a lo vivo/Pris sur le vif, 'Interaction with Impact,' a multimedia cd-rom for French and Spanish. The cd-rom contains video clips, graphics, text, maps, audio, and photos of the cultures they are learning about.
In a menu screen, students can choose from a wide variety of topics to explore: music, sports, food, transportation, and more. In an activity screen, a native speaker introduces herself to students, who respond either orally or in writing. If students need help, on-screen scripts, translations, and hints are available to them. Student work can be saved and printed to develop a portfolio. Finally, a video sequence acquaints students with the culture and language of the young people of the Hispanic and French-speaking worlds. Encuentros a lo vivo/Pris sur le vif is designed for use with a Macintosh with 4 megabytes of ram, hard drive with 5 megabytes of free spacesystem 6.07 or laterwith a cd-rom drive and microphone (optional).
For more
information, call
1-800-554-4411
DC Heath presents CINE Interactive, a culturally authentic and easy-to-use videodisc-based program ideal for either self-paced or group langugage learning. The program uses award-winning feature films from around the world to create a powerful and effective language learning environment for the advanced second-language classroom.
Controlling the laserdisc, students can instantly replay any segment of the film, view the original language script or an English translation of any segment, click on a word for a definition, or view language or culture notes. CINE Interactive is ideal for reviewing slang and colloquialisms; evaluating aural and written comprehension; increasing comprehension, translation, and dictation skills; and reinforcing and reviewing grammar fine points, all while building cultural awareness.
The CINE Interactive film library includes: La Deuda Interna and La Ciudad y los Perros (The City and the Dogs) in Spanish, Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) and Les Rgles du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) in French, Mephisto and Abgeschminkt (Making Up) in German, Generalskaya Dochka (The Generals Daughter) in Russian, Ren Dao Zhong (At Middle Age) in Mandarin Chinese, and several others, including films in Arabic, Farsi, and Serbian/Croatian.
For more information, contact DC Heath and Company, 1-800-235-3565; for prices, ext. 1819
Athelstan is now distributing the highly acclaimed Electronic Oxford Wordpower Dictionary, from Oxford University Press. Developed by the same team that initiated the British National Corpus, the Electronic OWP is an ideal electronic reference tool for users and learners of English as a foreign language.
It provides clear definitions students can understand, using a core vocabulary of 3500 important words; 30,000 example sentences showing words in use; 1500 vocabulary notes to explain difficulties and show links and contrasts between words; a separate section on irregular verbs; over 650 illustrations to improve comprehension; an easy-to-use pronunciation guide; vocabulary study pages to sharpen dictionary skills; direct access to idioms and phrasal verbs; common first names and geographic names; direct link to and from Microsoft Word for Windows; and a print function for dictionary entries and games.
The Electronic Oxford Wordpower Dictionary also gives instant access to any part of the dictionary and rapid cross-referencing, allowing students to: look up any word via its headword, compound, or derivative; cross-reference any word in an entry to its headword; view illustrations, whenever they are referred to in the text; find word combinations; search the entire dictionary; convert between metric and non-metric units; extend and practice their vocabulary by playing the challenging Wordpower games; and refer to the dictionary from a word processor document, with the option of copying and pasting dictionary entries into the word processor document.
Hardware requirements: 386 or above IBM or compatible; hard disk drive; 3.5" floppy disk drive; 2 MB of free RAM; VGA monitor or above; Windows 3.1 or above; optional printer.
OwdWs-I $ 49.95
Each topic contains eight sequenced activities designed to help the student maximize learning: Introduction, Listening with Images, General Comprehension, Listening with Text, Vocabulary Exercises, Grammar Exercises, Listening Exercises, and Complementary Exercises. Interactive features include an opening screen that allows student to choose from five interface support languages, help menus that give explanations and information about using the program, recording capability so that students can record their voice and compare it to the native speaker's voice, and a program that keeps and analyzes student answers based on general comprehension and has them readily available as feedback any time.
Hardware and Software requirements include a pc 386 cpu, 2 mb ram, 6 free mb of hard disk for one subject, 35 free mb for all subjects, a color ega/vga monitor, cd-rom drive with audio output, headphones or speaker, Microsoft-compatible mouse, dos 3.1 or greater operating system, Windows 3.1 graphic interface. Prices range from $290.00 to $395.00 per disc. A demo disk is available for $15.00.
For more
information, contact Athelstan or
Mediaconcept,
Showroom Parisien,
55, rue Etienne Dolet92248,
Malakoff Cedex
France,
33(1)4612-6969
Fax. 33(1)4612-6979
The topics of study are taken from current international news stories and range from science to the environment, from women's issues to the arts, from political and economic news to even culinary subjects. Subscribers will receive updated modules at regular intervals to keep the program content current, maintaining students' interest and providing ongoing reinforcement and practice.
Headlines Interactive is scheduled to be released
in spring of 1996. For more information, contact: California State
University, Long Beach
Dept. of Romance, German, Russian Languages &
Literatures
1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90840
(310)
985-4316 or (310)985-4318
Fax (310) 985-2406
or e-mail Clorinda
Donato at CDonato@CSULB.edu
Deborah Healey
[Reprinted from Something To Do On Tuesday published by Athelstan]
Macintosh
Express Yourself
Level: High intermediate to advanced
call-is Macintosh Library
Age: Grade 6
and up; especially Grades 9-12 and U.S. immigrants
The computer is a great device for storing, manipulating, and retrieving information in a variety of forms, which makes it a powerful reference tool. A hypertext/hypermedia document can let learners find the information they want easily, present that information in more than just textual form, and offer side trips along related lines to tickle the imagination and build a context for information. As such, it gives more than a book can. The drawback is that the greater the freedom hypermedia users have to explore information, the greater the possibility that they will get lost and fail to see the major points while wandering about in tangential details---a problem not found with well-written books. The key is to find hypermedia that is well-written, with signposts that remind learners of the important points and maps that keep learners from getting lost.
Express Yourself is a HyperCard stack designed by the American Civil Liberties Union to teach students in US schools about the First Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees freedoms of speech, press, assembly, petition, and religion. It makes extensive use of graphics and branching within the text to let students learn more about each of the freedoms and related topics. The opening menu is shown in Figure 1.
The initial options are:
(1) an
introduction to the topic of First Amendment freedoms;
(2)
school-related First Amendment issues, with related court actions;
(3) profiles of individuals and groups whose ideas have molded the
First Amendment and court decisions;
(4) a game mode to test
one's knowledge; and
(5) a notebook to jot down ideas, a
bulletin board that provides a way for different people to add their
ideas and comment on the ideas of others (as in Figure 2), and a
reference section with information broken down into a variety of
different categories.
Within each option and
category are further choices and ways of seeking information. The end
product is a large, organized body of information, with a focus on
issues of interest to young adults. Certain key words within the text,
such as 'censorship' and 'obscene' are glossed to give the
specific meaning of these words within the context of the First
Amendment.
The following activity assumes advanced learners who
need to learn about U.S. government, such as U.S. high school students
and immigrants to the U.S..
Step 1: Have the students work
in pairs. Show them how to pull up the Notebook for taking notes. They
should start with the Introduction and What's Up sections, but can
move freely after that to explore issues.
Step 2: After the
students have had a chance to look around a bit at the information
provided, give them a specific information-gathering task. Examples
might be to describe four people who were important in clarifying
freedom of speech, to find three examples of court decisions that were
later overturned, or to find an example that they feel directly
relates to their own situation or interests.
Step 3: Ask
students to write their ideas and comments about at least two pieces
of information in the Bulletin Board area, and to respond to at least
two comments from other people in that area.
Step 4: Have
students try to find the timeline (in the Profiles section) or the Key
Cases (in the Reference section of the Tools) and write down six dates
and events they feel were very important.
Step 5:
Encourage students to try the game only after they have explored the
other choices from the main menu.
Additional
activities:
Students can be asked to look for more information
about one of the people in the Profiles section or about one of the
cases described in Express Yourself and write or tell the rest of the
class about it.
When playing the game, someone should write down the items that were missed. The players can go back later to try to find where the answers were.
Information can be exported from the Bulletin Board into a file, then opened in a word-processor. The ideas can be organized and used for debate or summarized in writing to give to the group.
Other open-ended hypertext/hypermedia programs include Culture (Cultural Resources), Islamic History Stack (call-is Macintosh Library), Science Adventure (Knowledge Adventure), and Who Killed JFK (call-is Macintosh Library).
Michael Barlow
Rice University
Like other concordance programs, ParaConc facilitates research into the lexical, syntactic, and semantic patterns of a language. However, the Macintosh program described here is rather different from other concordance programs in that it is designed to work with parallel texts, i.e., texts in two languages that are translations and are aligned in some way.
The use of the program typically involves searching for the forms within one language that convey the meaning that the user wants to express or investigate in a second language. The investigator specifies a morpheme, word, or phrase (what we will call a search term) and the program then finds and displays all the instances of the search term in the source language. The search term is typically displayed in the centre of the window, along with a context: the preceding and following words. The program also shows all the sentences in the second text that contain the meaning associated with the search term.
The screen in Figure 1 illustrates the layout of the program. The top two scrolling windows contain the first few lines of each corpus. In this instance the window on the left contains an English text and the one on the right contains a parallel Spanish text. And at the very top of the screen are the menus that are used to initiate searches and control the operation of the program. In Figure 1, the concordance window shows the results of a search for the word information. The sentences from Text 2 that contain the equivalent of each instance of information are displayed in the lower, larger window.
The results of performing a search can be examined in an attempt to find out how the second language expresses the notion captured by the search term in the first language. The nature of the research questions will depend on the competence and interests of the researcherwho may be a linguist, translator or language learner.
Using ParaConc
Loading Texts
Loading parallel into ParaConc is straightforward. The assimilation of text may take some time (i.e., several minutes) for a text file that is moderately large. However, assuming that you are patient and have space on your hard disk, there is no limit to the size of the text that can be loaded.
Searching
Searching is a simple matter of entering a search term or phrase in a `full search' dialogie box. The asterix (*) can be used to search for part of a word; for example, tak* will find words such as take, takes, and taking, thereby providing an approximate way of capturing a lemma, or word family. The asterix may be used both before and after part of a word.
The search term, which is centred and in boldface within the upper concordance window, is displayed along with a specified number of preceding and following characters. An alternative to the KWIC (Key Word In Context) format, which may be useful at times is the Sentence format. If Sentence is selected in the Concord menu, a tick will appear and the search results will be organised into sentences rather than the KWIC format.
Examining a concordance search
Each line in the upper concordance window can be examined to see whether the instance of the search term that was retrieved helps shed some light on whatever aspect of the language is being investigated. If the line in the concordance window does represent an instance of the language phenomenon being investigated, then the equivalent expression from Text 2, displayed in the lower sentence window, can be inspected. Thus if Line 4 of the concordance window is of interest, then Sentence 4 in the sentence window can be examined. Clicking on a line in the concordance window causes the corresponding lines in the sentence window to be scrolled into view and highlighted.
Sorting the results of a search
The search terms in the concordance window are displayed in the order in which they occur in Text 1. In many cases, it is beneficial to reorganise the display of the search terms. For example, to examine all the instances of know followed by that, or know followed by how, it would be useful to sort the lines in the concordance window so that the desired instances are grouped together.
Providing a translation
It is possible to find the translation equivalent of the search term by examining the appropriate sentence in the sentence window. To help locate the part of the sentence that contains the translation, it is useful to display the word or phrases that are potential translations in boldface. Since the program itself does not attempt to provide translations, the user must enter the translation using the `Suggested translation' option. The result is that all the instances of the word or phrase that are found in the sentence window appear in boldface, and so can easily be seen. Additional translation suggestions can also be entered.
Saving the results of a search
Typically the search results will be manipulated further using a word-processor. ParaConc allows the user to save both the concordance lines and translation equivalents to a text file. The search results can also be printed if necessary.
Preparation of parallel texts
For ParaConc to work correctly, the two parallel texts must be aligned. The alignment must be carried out manually (as opposed to automatically). Each sentence must be followed by a paragraph break (hard carriage return) so that, for example, sentence five in one text is equivalent to sentence five in the parallel text.
If the content of one sentence in one of the texts is equivalent to two sentences in the other text, then the usual practice is to split the single sentence into two at an appropriate place by means of a paragraph break.
Activities
ParaConc can be used to discover the form-meaning patterns that different languages conventionally use. These patterns occur at all levels of grammar, extending from differences in lexical organization to differences in rhetorical or discourse strategies. The following activities, which are based on an English-Spanish computer text, range from translations of lexical items to investigations of syntactic and semantic patterns. This abbreviated list of suggestions is presented simply to illustrate the kinds of research that can be carried out. (See also Salkie 1995.)
Words and morphemes
It is possible to use the morphological forms of one language to locate a grammatical domain in a second language. For example, a search on the possessive s form in English will select expressions related to possession in the second language. Alternatively, searching for the se forms in Spanish will select verbs associated with the middle voice and related domains in English.
In a similar vein, the encoding of concepts related to spatial configuration by prepositions such as in and on and the extensions of meanings of these prepositions in different languages is an interesting area that can be investigated using ParaConc.
The extensive use of phrasal verbs such as listen to and take off in English can be investigated in a variety of ways using ParaConc. It is possible, of course, to simply search for a particular phrasal verb in English and examine the translation. Other exercises might involve searching for a common verb such as take (by searching for tak* perhaps) and then performing a right-sort on the results so that instances of each phrasal verb based on take occur together. The user can then quickly locate a variety of instance such as take in, take on, take out, etc.
It is also possible to use ParaConc as a contextualized thesaurus. For example, searching for the verb say in English reveals that in most cases the equivalent verb is decir. However, the verb afirmar is also used in some sentences. The translation option allows the user to track down alternative translations. For instance, having searched for say, the user can search for dice*, which will then be highlighted in most of the Spanish sentences. Here, as in many other instances, it is the sentences that do not contain an item in boldface which are interesting and worthy of further investigation. A similar exercise involves searching for a simple English word such as home or high and examining how it is translated in the second language in different contexts.
Collocations and phrases
Another use of ParaConc, which takes advantage of the information-on-demand aspect of concordance searching, lies in the discovery of technical or specialised terminology. It is unlikely that dictionaries will have translations for modern computer terms such as information highway, email, and home shopping. However, searching for these terms using a suitable parallel text will reveal the latest usage and also the variants that are possible.
Non-technical collocations such as reference book and in transition, as well as phrases such as there is and it seems can also be examined. (Unfortunately, content words are relatively infrequent in texts and so collocations will be absent or of low frequency in small corpora.)
Availability
Researchers who wish to use the program should contact the author to obtain a copy of a simple licence agreement. There is no charge for the use of ParaConc for research purposes. Copies of the program for use in computer labs and for student (non-research) use can be purchased from Athelstan for $49.95.
[Note: A Windows version of ParaConc will be on sale later in the year.]
Since the use of parallel corpora for research purposes is a novel activity and since parallel corpora must be located and formatted appropriately, it is beneficial to all to promote cooperation and communication among researchers interested in particular languages. I hope that it will be possible to link small groups of researchers who are interested in particular languages (French/English. German/English, etc.) so that the parallel corpora can be shared, along with techniques and research results.
References
Barlow, Michael. 1995. A Guide to ParaConc. Houston: Athelstan.
Salkie, Raphael. 1995. INTERSECT: a Parallel Corpus Project at Brighton University Computers & Texts 9: 45.
Dr. Michael Barlow
Department of Linguistics
Rice University
Houston, TX 77005
barlow@ruf.rice.edu
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~barlow
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